


Isn't It A Drag

by The_Zealot



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: F/F, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, War, domestic terrorism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-11-18 04:53:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18113684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Zealot/pseuds/The_Zealot
Summary: Taylor Hebert just wants to sit back, have a smoke, and relax. The gangs of Brockton Bay don't seem to want to let her, so she takes matters into her own hands. With the memories of every fighter since World War One, she's rather adept at solving her problems, as they'll soon find out.





	1. Cordite - 1.1

The gunfire pissed me off. I took another drag off my cigarette as I leaned back into the rough brick of the roof access siding, staring off into the city horizon as I ignored the gravel biting into my legs.

The gunfire _really_ pissed me off. Honestly, was it too much to ask that I just get ten goddamn minutes to have a smoke? I’m not even in a border zone, there really shouldn’t be shit like this going on.

Eventually the shouting and rifle shots got so damn annoying I couldn’t even enjoy my break anymore. I tossed my cigarette to the gravel roofing as I stood, giving it a quick stomp as I picked up my rifle and adjusted my rigging.

If the fuckers weren’t going to let me relax then I guess it was time to get back to work. My rifle loaded and my gear secure, I walked around to the roof access door, kicked it in, and started making my way down the building.

About two thirds of the way down was when I made contact with the fucks shooting up the place. Empire Eighty Eight boys and not newbies either, at least judging by the gear they had, so I guess they were here on serious business. Normally I wouldn’t give a damn, but you try balancing a shitty school life, a shitty home life, and a fuck load of shitty past lives, and those few moments you get to just unwind get to be special to you.

They didn’t take very long to notice me, and their first reaction was to send a hail of bullets towards me, higher ground worked for me and they all missed by feet. _Well_ , I thought to myself, _I guess that settles whether to go lethal or not_. I thumbed the safety as I brought my rifle to bear, sending a quick burst towards the Nazis before dropping into cover.

Firefights aren’t fun, no matter what action movies and video games might tell you, and it was even worse being five on one. Nonetheless, that was the situation I found myself in, and I was loathe to let literal Nazis be the bastards to put me down.

As silent as I could I moved away from my previous position, which was being peppered with bullets, and made my way to a better firing line while keeping under the railing wall. Once I deemed myself in a good enough place, I quickly stood in a half-crouch and sighted the guy in the back, a trigger pull later and a couple 5.56mm rounds tore through his unarmoured chest, if he wasn’t dead he was at least out.

Of course, his friends noticed that pretty quick and started to change where they were firing at with commendable speed and coordination. Unfortunately for them, it was fast enough for me to squeeze my trigger three more times, sending a ragged hail of bullets sweeping through three of them. They dropped like the first, either dead or too wounded to get up.

It was around the time chunks started getting taken out of my cover I decided to duck back down and move somewhere else. I decided to go for a flank, considering the guys who had been guarding against that were suffering from a case of death. I will admit, as I was slowly making my way around the side, I didn’t expect the E88 to be so silly as to attempt a forward charge.

I just shrugged, thumbed my fire selector, rose from my cover, and let loose a torrent of rounds that ripped through the two remaining gangers. And with that, my magazine was empty and the fight was done. Of course I loaded another before advancing.

Capes have a time-honoured tradition, or so I’m told, of looting the shit out of people they take down. Although, I think most capes usually leave people a bit more alive than I do, but hey, they had the luxury of surviving a bullet if they get shot.

I did a quick check that nobody was waiting for me to get stupid, and satisfied that the Nazis weren’t good enough at strategy to pull that, I let my rifle drop to my side as I went to investigate the cooling gangers.

For all their preaching of ‘American superiority’ and patriotism, they had a whole lot of Russian made rifles. Of course, that made the vast majority of their shit incompatible with mine since you don’t really shove a 7.62mm into a 5.56mm magazine unless you want your gun to not work.

Thankfully, one of them had a NATO approved rifle which I was able to scrounge rounds from, adding about two mags worth to my stock. Handguns were more fruitful in the ammo department, most gangers used 9mm these days since it was cheap and plentiful.

Of course, there’s always that one guy who thinks he’s a badass and buys something expensive for no damn reason, in this case a FN Five-seven with a measly single full magazine. I pocketed it anyway because if nothing else I could sell it. Being honest, if I could I’d take all the rifles as well but the impracticality of trying to carry five full sized assault rifles through an active combat zone made me rethink the idea.

The guy who bought the thing really splurged, he even had a holster that looked custom made for it. Well, he wasn’t using it being dead and I _could_  use it to make more people dead. A net gain for me.

Other than the gun related stuff, each of the Nazis had a wallet with at least a few bucks in each which I pocketed for myself, along with the fancy new model smartphone one was carrying. Without a passcode. Because nobody said Nazis were smart.

My looting done I stowed my shit, stood up, and dusted off my gloved hands as I pulled my rifle into my arms and continued my way down to the ground floor.

It was gonna be a long damn night if the Empire had pushed this far into ABB territory, and I did _not_  need to attempt suicide by Lung with anything less than a .308 in my hands.

********

Life’s a bitch and so am I. At least, I kept getting called a bitch, but does it really count if you’re being called a bitch by a bitch who’s only friends are bitches? I shrugged, took a pull off my cigarette, and decided not to contemplate the universal truths of bitches while on my smoke break.

Winslow High School, what a place. Shitty classes, shitty teachers, shitty students, but a surprisingly nice view from the roof. The place was taller than most buildings around it, and the roof was actually solid instead of gravel which made it all the nicer to relax on.

Of course, I didn’t get to relax up her as much as I really wanted, because the minute Emma and her lot found out I smoked up here I’d never get it back. I rotated between here, the third floor girls bathrooms, and the little alcove under the stairs on the ground floor, and that movement plan usually worked out pretty well for me.

Of course, if I wanted a foolproof movement schedule, I probably could’ve made one, but that was honestly too much work for insignificant shit like this and honestly I could just duck out of the damn school itself if I really needed a smoke.

I heard the bell ring through the door and decided to head inside, cigarette still hanging from my lips. The school staff didn’t give a fuck, to be honest, I mostly hid out because the hallways were too easy to be found in.

Speaking of being found, it seemed Miss Fortune decided right about now was the perfect time to fuck with me as I saw Emma and friends quickly approaching even as I took another drag off my cigarette.

Used to be I’d hide all my shit from her in case she tried to use it against me, but honestly, once you’ve participated in a few hundred tours of duty, your ex best friend bullying you over your smoking habits don’t really have the same weight anymore.

“Wow Taylor, I never would’ve pegged you for a smoker. I wonder what your dad would think if he found out?” She said it in such a sickly sweet voice that if you were going by tone and inflection alone you might think she just offered an invite to her birthday party.

“Emma, have you even see my dad in the past two years? He doesn’t even care enough to not drink around me, the fact I smoke isn’t gonna mean shit.” I responded in as deadpan a voice as I could and took another pull off the cigarette, purposefully blowing the smoke towards her face.

“Oh, so you’ve finally come to terms with the fact your dad doesn’t even care about you enough to worry? I guess you’ve finally accepted how worthless you are.” She giggled as if she’d made a clever joke, meanwhile Sophia actually frowned a bit and Madison just looked vaguely uncomfortable. Fuck if I know what that was about.

“Yeah yeah, whatever, do I need to toss this now or can I just go on with my life? I’m just sick of dealing with all this petty shit Emma.” I stared into her eyes, and she flinched as she stared back. I could be poetic and say that my soul was the abyss that stared into her own, and she was cowed by what she saw. In reality though she probably just noticed how much I didn’t give a fuck, I don’t know and I don’t care.

“Hmrph, yeah, sure, just go ahead and feed your addiction Taylor. Not like anyone’s going to care if you get cancer or something.” She sneered and stepped back a bit, motioning for her groupies to move aside.

I just gave a halfhearted shrug and started walking forwards, eager to get rid of this shit. Of course, Sophia couldn’t just let sleeping dogs lie and had to shoulder check me, which sent my poor half-gone cigarette tumbling to the floor. I just let out a sigh as I looked down dispassionately and gave it a good stomp as I kept walking.

Wouldn’t want the place to go up in flames or anything, right?


	2. Cordite - 1.2

_ ‘...fuckin’ Kuwait, man.’ _

 

_ “...Can you believe this shit? The people still haven’t picked up the trash from the last war…” _

 

_ ‘People have been fightin’ over this bitch since ancient times, dog. How many graves you standin’ on? Think about all the wisdom and science, and money and civilization it took to build these machines. And the courage, of all the men who came here. And the love, of their wives and children that was in their hearts. And all that hate, dog… all the hate it took to blow all these motherfuckers away. It’s destiny dog, white man's gotta rule the world…’ _

 

I woke up sweating, which confused me, it wasn’t even a bad memory. Sure, the desert was hot and the sights were depressing, but shit could’ve been a lot worse. We could’ve lost the firefight that day, ended up with our humvee being the vehicle exploding out on that nameless desert trail.

 

That being said, the day hadn’t been all fun and games. Playing in the sandbox is really just asking to get sand in your eyes.

 

I stopped reminiscing over lives I’d never actually lived, I was a 15 year old girl for fuck’s sake, not a 20-something soldier in Iraq. Of course, none of that shit mattered when I still had the memories, the experience of the hot air on my skin and the sand blasting me in the face.

 

Even if I didn’t live them, though, I still knew them. I still remembered pushing into Poland, defending France, claiming Berlin. I remembered crawling through rat tunnels in Vietnam, trudging through the jungles of Korea. I remembered the goddamn sandbox, even if it wasn’t the one from my Earth, and what a fucked up feeling that is.

 

I gave my head a shake, and walked across to the bathroom to enjoy a short seven minutes of hot water. That’s not to say we were so poor our hot water heater only did seven minutes, it was perfectly capable of half hour hot water showers if you wanted. It’s just that on the day I woke up in a hospital bed after living through lifetimes of war… well, you learn not to take long showers in a war zone.

 

I toweled off, moved back to my room and started getting dressed. Used to be I dressed bright, yellows and blues shit like that. After high school started my wardrobe changed to be dark colours, big things like hoodies that I could retreat into. Now, after the whole locker thing and my… ‘awakening’? Now I wore simple shit, efficient shit. Well made boots, had to save for them, durable cargo pants that’d pass for fatigues if they were patterned, also expensive if you wanted them made well, and finally a simple shirt over a sports bra, not that I needed much of one but it was the principle that counted.

 

As I got dressed, I reflected that at least I wasn’t suiting up in a MOPP suit in the middle of a hundreds miles drive through a fucking desert. I’d done that one too many goddamn times.

 

I packed a few notebooks into my daypack, a few pencils and pens, and a complete and utter lack of school textbooks. I’d been spending my time memorizing military code because even if you live through the shit, well, you don’t always get everything and it was surprisingly amusing to boot.

 

Dad wasn’t awake by the time I finished breakfast and walked out the door. I didn’t wake him.

 

********

 

I didn’t bother with the bus anymore. Once I got all these fucking lives in my head, it wasn’t like I could just shake all the habits I’d accrued. One of those was a morning run. At first I wasn’t physically able to accomplish what I felt I should, what I was used to my body being able to do, so I kept working at it until I could. A few months later, and I was making the trip to my school at a light jog without any problems. It made me feel right.

 

I pushed my way through the doors of the school right as the morning bell rang, giving me five minutes to get to my first class. I didn’t need it, but it was nice to wind down from my run with a slow walk to class.

 

********

 

Classes went as they do every day, slower than would make them quick and faster than would make them fade away in monotony. Computer class was simple enough for my relative education to my age, you’d be surprised the amount of programmers the military employs, so that was fun. Math was boring and shit I’d never need in life. World Events was still less about the world and more about the events and even then not important ones, although perhaps now I just figured wars were a lot more important than everyone else believed them to be. Finally I had art class, in which I rendered a perfect still life of the bombed remains of an Iraqi village that’d been on the wrong end of a firebombing run.

 

Of course, lunch was between math and world events, during which I ate the healthiest thing I could make for myself with the shit we had at home, I’d have to go shopping soon, and then had a smoke break. I decided, fuck it I could treat myself after my weird morning, and spent most of my lunch up on the roof both basking in the sunshine and admiring the view of the city. It really was beautiful when you couldn’t look to close at it. Of course, nicotine helped too.

 

********

 

_ ‘... Hey, I put on my superhero costume every day I’m in the corps brother. Oorah!’ _

 

A lot of people don’t seem to understand the point of camo. Many people think it’s just there to look neat, or look sorta like where you are. Others think the point is to blend in, make the enemy think you’re just another wall. In reality, in today’s day and age, with the prevalence of advanced imaging technology and night vision optics, the real purpose of camouflage and the reason militaries have mostly switched to digital patterns, is to break up the human profile. You see, blending in doesn’t work for shit when people can see you clear as day 500 yards away and in the middle of the night, what does help is looking like a bunch of weird blotches and shapes against more blotches and shapes, instead of looking like a human being to be shot at.

 

So, with this in mind, I was very happy to have some effective urban camouflage fatigues to make up my ‘costume’. Honestly, the difference between myself and a modern soldier was mostly quality and sizing. My own stuff was much higher quality than most mass produced milspec gear, owing to the fact I hand made most of it. The shit I couldn’t make I bought from good sources, although keep in mind good doesn’t always mean legal, but you try buying ballistic plates as a 15 year old.

 

I wore the full setup, from balaclava to ballistic helmet to plate carrier to combat boots, I was geared up like a fucking child soldier of the highest quality. Not that most people would be able to tell I was a teen based on my size, especially not with the way I held myself or with how I handled my rifle and sidearm. I wasn’t bad in bayonet combat either.

 

All my gear checked and my stuff sorted and I was ready to move out. I deployed out of an abandoned warehouse on the west side, reason being it included a basement I’d been able to make secure enough to comfortably hold most of my gear. Of course I kept some at home because not sleeping with a gun wasn’t something I could physically do anymore.

 

********

 

You know how when you go outside from a dark room and your eyes get hit by the light? You know how that hurts like a bitch? Well, it just so happens the same effect can be attained by suddenly shining a flashlight in a guy’s face. It’s even worse when said flashlight is strobing like a motherfucker every few seconds, right in your face.

 

I mention this because it happens to be what I was doing to a couple of E88 guys who just happened to have the misfortune of being in a dark building with me. Now, you might be wondering why I was going right to lethal, and for that I have a simple answer: They’re Nazis and they’ve got guns. You need any reason more than that and I don’t know what to tell you.

 

With that in mind, I started sending rounds into the guys in front of me, the three of them dropped quick enough after about twelve shots and I moved up to one of the windows, after cutting my light. The streets were lit up enough that I didn’t need to use NVGs which was great because depth perception in those was a bitch.

 

The immediate area around the window was clear, so I busted it open with a few quick smacks of my rifle butt and hopped out into the street. I didn’t really know where to go from there, so I took a moment to look around. The gunfire coming from the north was as good a destination as any, so I started moving.

 

********

 

_ ‘... Up until October third and fourth, every mission we did went exactly the way it was supposed to go…’ _

 

Going to be honest, being on the receiving end of a surprise firefight isn’t fun. This very same lack of fun was the reason I was crouched behind a store counter made of what might as well have been tissue paper with five Empire grunts shooting AKs at me.

 

The motherfuckers happened upon me while I was reading my map, sue me. Anyway, they saw ‘tall person with a rifle in military gear’ and I guess they assumed I was either a cape or a merc, so they opened fire.

 

Lucky for me I fucking noticed the bastards just in time to not get shot, less lucky or more depending on how you look at it, the quickest way out of immediate danger was through a plate glass window. I am forever thankful for the anti-rip qualities of military fatigues.

 

A moving firefight, my suppressed rifle to their much louder ones trading rounds as I retreated further into the store had lead to where I was now. Bunched in a tiny ass fucking sales counter with Nazis on each side and my magazine close to empty.

 

Now, I usually like to save resources, I try and be accurate with my shots and I don’t waste time with witty one-liners or any of that shit. I mention this because it puts into perspective the level of fucked I was that I was considering tossing a grenade at the three guys to me left and hoping it’d fuck ‘em up bad enough for me to gain the upper hand.

 

The bullet going past my knee made the decision for me and so as my rifle clicked empty I dropped it on its sling and ripped a grenade from its pouch. That cooking thing you see in games and shit is fake, by the way. With a mental count for the break in their firing, I pulled the pin and released the spoon as I tossed that metal ball of death towards the Nazis who were doing such lovely interior renovation on my cover.

 

Luckily enough for me they were too caught up in the whole ‘let’s shoot the fuck out of the military dude’ to notice the frag bouncing by their feet, at least, they didn’t notice until the explosion sent shrapnel through most of them. The guy who was left standing received a bullet for his efforts and joined his friends on the ground.

 

At this point the two guys who were just out of range of the blast zone started firing with renewed vigor, spouting something about how they’d fuck me up for their friends and all that shit, but two people are much easier to deal with than a solid five. With this in mind, I calmly counted down their remaining rounds in my head, twisted around the side of my cover, and placed a short burst into each Nazi’s chest. Suffice to say they dropped.

 

It was just about the time that I was reloading my rifle and making sure that everyone not me was dead that I heard a sharp ding come from one of the guy’s pockets. The absence of any more Empire in the are assured, I moved over to the cooling body and searched him.

 

A quick pat down later and I found the guy’s phone… with a text message freely visible telling him to come to a house back in Empire territory. The opsec of these people is honestly disgusting, but if it helps me than I guess they can keep up… not putting passwords on their shit? I don’t know, I honestly thought people in general were smarter than this.

 

Well, the night was still young at only ten minutes past one and I now had a much more interesting location to visit than simply going back home. After making sure I’d nabbed all the important shit I could from the dead guy’s, I started making my way towards Empire territory.


	3. Cordite - 1.3

_ ‘You are no longer black, or brown, or yellow, or red. You are now green! You are light green or dark green! Do you understand?’ _

 

I arrived at the location from the message, a small two storey deep in Empire territory, after about half an hour spent avoiding patrols or simply traveling. I gotta say, it was a nice place, such a shame it’s owned by Nazis.

 

The night was in full force by this point, darkness filling every space it could that streetlights or houselights didn’t specifically illuminate. Under the cover of this pervading shadow I made my approach to the house, I stuck to the cover provided by the parked cars and hedges to stay out of sight of the sentry at the front of the house.

 

My goal was the back door of the house, lit only by the sporadic flickering of an old lamp it was my best bet for entering unseen. I’ll admit, at first I thought that perhaps this was the wrong place, even with the guard there didn’t seem to be much going on.

 

My view on the location was quickly changed upon my passing of a bay window, through which I saw a congregation of gang members playing poker and in the midst of sharing racist jokes. Honestly I’m not even surprised at this point that they were loud enough to be heard through the window.

 

I just kept moving, nearing the back of the house and my target. Just as I was about to pass the corner I was forced to stop and press myself against the shadowed wall as an Empire guy walked out of the backdoor clutching a cigarette and fingering the pistol shoved down his pants. That was honestly a recipe for shooting his dick off, but hey, I don’t really care.

 

Not like it mattered if he shot his dick off when he wasn’t gonna be alive to use it. Case in point, I slipped around the corner and quietly climbed the short porch he was standing on, moving behind him under cover of darkness I struck with speed and precision. My gloved hand reached around his head and muffled his shouts, he wouldn’t be heard over the sounds of the group inside, and my knife entering the base of his skull made sure he wouldn’t get to keep shouting.

 

With the utmost care I laid the Nazi’s body down on the porch, it simply wouldn’t do to have the loud thump of a falling body alert anyone.

 

The guy happened to have left the door open, conveniently enough for me, so I simply slipped inside on quiet shoes, my handgun at the ready for the close interiors of the house. Usually I wouldn’t use a handgun in cases like this, I much prefer to clear rooms with automatic rifle fire, but considering there was a guard outside and this was an Empire neighborhood in Empire territory, well, it pays to be silent.

 

It was also much easier to leave people alive for interrogation if I don’t just fill rooms with bullets. Sometimes, anyway. Sometimes you get the people who really make you wish you’d missed the guy next to them instead.

 

Anyway, the house wasn’t all that big and from the kitchen which the back door led to there were only two ways forwards, I took the one on the right and slipped into a low crouch as I quietly made my way across the heavily carpeted floor. Praise the stealth gods.

 

The door to the room everyone was in was, annoyingly, closed. However, being the person I am, I decided to turn that negative into a positive, using a small hand mirror I kept on me to check under the edge of the door.

 

The angle was pretty bad, as is to be expected, but what I could see combined with the noises from those inside gave me a pretty good idea of how many there were, and where they were. By my estimate I had to deal with at least nine Empire members, most of them gathered around the central table but with a couple more towards the room edges. Those ones were priority for when I breached.

 

Stowing my mirror I quickly debated the merits of kicking down the door for a proper breach, but decided that the collective shout of surprise that would get would be rather adverse to my not being discovered.

 

My plan decided and my suppressed sidearm in hand, I turned the handle and slowly began to pull open the door, hoping that the focus was on the game and not on the door to the kitchen. For once my hopes were deemed satisfactory and fortune shone upon me, not a single Nazi had noticed the door.

 

What they would certainly notice was my geared-up self slipping inside, rounding corners is one of those things that easily draws the human eye, so now was when I struck with speed and fury. The cover of stealth still on my side I raised my handgun and sighted the ganger farthest back, firing a round right into his head even as I was turning my sights to the next.

 

Four of them fell this way, dead before anyone could even react. The remaining four were still in a state of shock, even as they hid behind their game table. I pushed forth, speed was of the essence here and as I jumped the table I was rewarded for my charge. They were in the midst of drawing weapons, none ready for a frontal assault of pistol and blade.

 

In those next few vicious, bloody seconds three of the Nazis fell too shocked to even scream as blade and bullet ended their lives. In the end only one remained, a muscled guy with dark brown hair and green eyes, his handgun kicked from him under the table and his jewelry doing nothing but hindering him as I shoved my gun against his head and began to secure his hands.

 

Once I was sure he was suitably helpless, stripped of weapon and with no escape from his bindings in sight, I decided it was time to deal with the sentry out front. With no support he would go down easy.

 

With a quiet born of well-maintained parts and good oiling, the front door slid open. The only notice the front guard got of his impending retirement was the lights behind him getting brighter as the door swung free. 

 

In the midst of turning towards me he recieved a knife through the eye of his cheap sunglasses, his body falling like a puppet with its strings cut even as I carefully dragged the body inside. Shutting the door behind me I took a moment to stop and listen, nothing but silence on the other side.

 

Dragging his body back to the living room I tossed it in front of my ‘subject’ with sufficient velocity to make a loud thump against the carpet, startling the Empire ganger so much that he attempted to get to his feet, which just forced him to crash back to the ground once his tied legs couldn’t get into position.

 

“So. Now that we’re all alone, just me and you,” I unsheathed my knife, the same one that had killed his friends, and began to clean it, “I think that we should do some talking. See, I don’t much like Nazis, mostly because you’re making a mockery of the cause but also because you people are a cancer upon this city.” I didn’t mention how they also kept interrupting my smoke breaks.

 

“So, what I’m going to ask you is: Who are the people that get shit done? I want to know whoever’s in charge of things for your literal organization, and don’t give me any of that ‘the capes run everything’ bullshit, because we all know they delegate.” I kept playing with my knife, staring him down as he tried to cower backwards, but there was nowhere to run.

 

“I-if I tell you then… then they’d kill me!” He nearly shouted that last part, his eyes going wide.

 

I simply gave him a smile, not that he could see under my shemagh, and spoke in a level voice, “If you don’t tell me, then  _ I’ll _ kill you. Right here, right now. At least with betraying the Empire, you get the chance of getting out alive.” For dramatic effect I impaled my blade on the poker table I was sitting on, I think it had the intended effect.

 

“I… alright, alright… I don’t know much, okay, I wasn’t very high up but I’ll tell you what I can… you promise to let me get outta the city, right?” He was nervous about the whole thing, so I leaned close to him, gave another unseen smile, and told him that he’d even get time to pack.

 

********

 

What followed the scared little Nazi’s change of heart was a two hour back and forth of questions and answers. I asked the questions, he answered them for fear of death. In the end, he didn’t know as much as I was hoping, but knew more than I feared, so it balanced out in the end. I had leads to follow on getting rid of the Empire and with the supplies and capital I would accrue during that, I could set my sights on ending Lung and his ABB. A little fun kill-missions to take out the Merchants would be a nice, easy few days to relax in after all the excitement of taking out the bigger two.

 

“Hrm, alright well I think that covers everything I wanted to know. You’ve done a good job.” I said to the man who’s name I hadn’t cared to ask for, sheathing my knife and sliding off the table.

 

“Uh, thanks ma’am… so, uh, are you gonna untie me so I can leave?” He asked, struggling to stand, his eyes darting around the room.

 

“Oh, who ever said anything about you getting to leave?” I muttered just loud enough for him to hear, drawing my handgun at the same time.

 

“But- but you promised! You said I’d get to go, leave the city if I told you what I knew!” He was getting hysterical at this point, shouting louder and louder. It’d stand out at this time of night.

 

“What a shame I lied then, isn’t it?” I asked him my final question, raising my sidearm in a smooth motion and pulling the trigger as his head entered the sight, quickly ending his struggle with the pop of a suppressed 9mm flying into his skull.

 

I holstered my sidearm and took a look around the room. Nine corpses total, one outside. Five dead from gunshot wounds, the rest from stabs to vital areas. All of my shots were clean, there weren’t any missed bullets lodged in the wall. Giving the house a more in depth look over I policed all my brass, so that nothing could be traced back to myself, and made my way upstairs to see if there was anything of interest.

 

The upstairs had only three rooms, four if you count the hall bathroom, One was an office space, a nice desktop computer humming in standby. One room was the master bedroom, rather spartan in appearance. And the final room was a guest room. Nothing of note until I looked closer, spying the open closet door. Walking over I found a panel of the wall just a bit off.

 

Pulling the wall panel aside I was greeted by a small supply cache of ammunition and explosives. Far too much for me to take all of it, but I could certainly top up my reserves, maybe even take a bit extra back home to test some ideas out on. For a moment I entertained the idea of wiring the house to blow, but that would be too obvious.

 

As it was, nobody knew anything about me, all they would know was that a group of their men stopped reporting in, by the time they found them I doubt there’d be anything they could use to find me.

 

I was hoping to put off heading into the public spotlight for as soon as possible, once you do that everyone sees one of two things: How valuable an ally you’d make, or how dangerous an enemy.

 

With a final quick check to make sure everything was in order, I left the house as silently as I’d entered. Tomorrow I had yet another fantastic day at school, and after that? After that, it was Nazi hunting time.


	4. Cordite - 1.4

I got home in the early morning; It was still early enough the sun hadn’t risen, and I could get a few hours of sleep before the ‘day’ began. I entered the house quietly, devoid of much of my heavier gear this was pretty easy. A quick survey of the house revealed my father passed out on the couch, again. I went up to my room and undressed, slipping beneath my bed sheets with my handgun beneath the pillow beside me.

 

I could hope for a few hours. I’d done well during the night, and sleeping suddenly and in odd places was something of a skill of mine, my bed should be easy.

 

It was so easy in fact that if it weren’t for my body’s almost supernatural internal clock, I would’ve woken up late. I had forgotten to set an alarm in my weariness and almost overslept. Thankfully I hadn’t, giving me time for a shower and breakfast before I made my way to school. The living room was a bit cleaner than it was when I got home, practically a miracle.

 

The trip to the school took less time than the bus would, the joys of not having to wait at stops and all that. The good point of this being that it gave me some twenty minutes, when I decided to make good time, for me to have a smoke out front before heading in.

 

The only bad point was that’s also when a lot of the druggie kids got to school, and I had to share space with them. It was usually less than pleasant.

 

This in mind I walked around the side of the school, my first class was on this side anyway, and headed over to the side door. Shrugging my bag off to the ground I opened one of the pouches on my jacket, and took out both my cigarettes and my lighter.

 

Evidently I was just in time to have the door shoved into me, causing me to trip and drop my lighter as I very deliberately ignored the years of reflexive reactions ingrained in my body so as not to utterly brutalize whoever had run through the door.

 

I quickly leaned down and grabbed my lighter before turning around, and coming face to face with a terrified-looking Madison Clements, who also happened to be clutching her own pack of cigarettes. Well, you learn something new everyday.

 

I guess she was too terrified to move or something because she just stood there shaking for a bit as I glared at her. Eventually it got boring so I shrugged and went back to the more important matter of getting my nicotine fix.

 

A few moments later she was still staring at me. “Do you need a light or something, because I really doubt I’m all that interesting to look at,” I grumbled after taking a drag, staring down at her from my superior height.

 

She didn’t even have the dignity to respond, just taking out a cigarette of her own and holding it out for me. Since I did offer and all, I went with it and set it going, at which point she leaned back against the door and started smoking.

 

A few minutes later and suddenly something’s pressed against my side. I looked down a bit to see Madison looking up at me, and after a few moments she just squeeks, “Uhm… thank you,” and turns away, heading inside the school.

 

I took a glance at my watch, shrugged, took a final pull off my cigarette and then tossed it on the concrete before following after Madison, giving it a stomp as I went.

 

Thus my school day was already weirder than most, it could only go up from there… probably.

 

********

 

Miracle of miracles my day was completely insignificant. This was compared to my usual day of verbal and occasionally physical combat with my three annoyances. I guess they’d decided to back off for a bit after I declared how little I cared. Maybe Madison said something, fuck if I know.

 

Anyway, school was out and my life was actually going pretty okay for once. I was on my jog homing, thinking what to do for the rest of the day. I was tempted to prepare for another mission in the night, but I had chosen beforehand to stagger my deployments so people wouldn’t hear too much about me.

 

There was always the option of doing some recon in civvie garb, but even if I was white I didn’t really like my chances walking around Empire turf without a weapon and a mask. Eventually I shrugged and picked up the pace a bit, I made a habit of pushing myself every other day to make my muscles burn a little, that’s how you know you’ve made progress.

 

In what felt like no time at all I had reached my house, walking up the stairs I’d repaired early that month I pulled out my key and unlocked the door. Dad wasn’t home of course, he spent most of his day from seven in the morning to eight at night over at the DWA, the Dockworkers Association, where he worked as the Head of Hiring.

 

I never asked much about what he did, it wasn’t very interesting and considering how every day he came home looking just a bit more depressed I could guess that the work wasn’t very good. Anyway, my Father and I had drifted apart as he fell more into alcoholism and I decided to actually make something of myself and get in shape. I guess he just couldn’t reconcile the timid, scared girl his daughter had been with myself. I couldn’t really bring myself to care.

 

Anyway, after putting my stuff in my room I made my way back downstairs to the kitchen for a nice after school snack, exercise requires calories, ya know? We didn’t have much of anything, reminding me that I really did need to go shopping. And like a gunshot wound I had what I was going to spend my afternoon on, grocery shopping.

 

It didn’t sound very exciting, because it wasn’t, but it did need to get done and if I waited for Dad to do it we’d end up with a fuck ton of shitty frozen pizzas or something. Personally I held myself to higher standards for food, most of the reason being that I was a very physically active teenager and MREs aren’t safe, or fun, to eat for more than 20 or so days.

 

Shrugging my jacket back on I grabbed some money from the small expenses stash I kept at home, it was all dirty money but with this being Brockton Bay so was most other money. Shoving the bills in my wallet I walked out the front door, locking it behind me, and started my leisurely walk to the grocery store, a Food Lion that was further away from the docks than our house and thus a nicer place to shop. The discounts were good too.

 

********

 

Shopping took a distressingly short amount of time, where as most girls might get sidetracked and spend half an hour debating over which cereal to get, so firm was my mental fortitude that I went in with my list and efficiently hunted down everything on it as quickly as possible. It wasn’t even intentional, really, that’s just how I was.

 

Seeing as it was only a little after four in the afternoon, I decided that I simply had to spend my time doing something else other than sitting around after I put away all the groceries. The options I had were rather few, so the option was simple. I would check over my armoury and maintain my gear, important stuff that.

 

After the time it took to get back home and put away the groceries, I had already made a sort of mental itinerary for what I would do at my forward base. I would start with weapon maintenance, as that was one of the most relaxing hobbies I had, and from there move on to checking my armour and other individual gear was in the right shape, I could repair most anything but catastrophic failures by myself, and after that was the always dreaded and always required taking of inventory. One might think I should do inventory before the other two, but fuck them I’ve had a boring day and I want to relax.

 

My spoils from the grocery store safely put away in their correct places, I put my jacket back on and headed once more into the city of Brockton Bay.

 

********

 

_ ‘This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. _

_ My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. _

_ Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will... _

_ My rifle and I know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit... _

_ My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will... _

_ Before God, I swear this creed. My rifle and I are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. _

_ So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but peace!’ _

 

Maintenance started with what needed it most, that being, my primary armaments. My main rifle for the urban setting of the city was an M4A1 carbine with a smattering of SOPMOD attachments from blocks one and two. In general I kept an AN/PEQ-15 laser targeter along with a tactical light attached onto the rails, one on either side, because they were the kind of useful I preferred to just take no matter what. Considering the rather tight quarters of the city I had no need for a magnified sight save for special cases, thus I used a reflex optic for most engagements. Rounding out the standard setup was an SR5 Suppressor, because I really preferred not having people wonder why there are gunshots going off.

 

Usually I did add specialty attachments to fit whatever mission I set for myself, for instance, most safe house raids prompted the use of the M26 MASS, an underbarrel shotgun that was fantastic for blowing locks out of doors or faces off people. For more open areas when I suspected to face large amounts of enemy combatants, or hardened targets, I took along an M320 grenade launcher, like the M26 it was mounted under the barrel but instead of shotgun shells it fired 40mm grenades. I like explosives, sue me.

 

The disassembly, cleaning, and reassembly of my rifle completed I moved on to my sidearm. It had a lot less modification than my rifle, for the obvious reason of it being smaller and not needing as much. 

 

I carried a P8, the Bundeswehr, the German Armed Forces, variant of the USP made by Heckler & Koch. There weren’t terribly many differences from a normal 9mm USP, it just felt better in my hands over the others. The only things on it were a LAM, that’s a Laser Aiming Module, and a rather fun suppressor because honestly if I was using my sidearm it was probably in an attempt to stealth. If I were pulling it out in a firefight, something was wrong.

 

My main weapons fully prim and proper I moved on to the more specialty stuff. I didn’t have nearly as much gear as I wanted, a full armoury was my eventual goal, but I did have two very important pieces of gear, one of which was a bitch and a half to get.

 

The first was a shotgun, because while the M26 can stand on its own, it is still a small shotgun and sometimes I want something bigger. That ‘something bigger’ happened to be a Mossberg 590A1 with a 20 inch barrel and little else in the way of modification. I hadn’t had need of a dedicated shotgun as of late, and so hadn’t gotten around to really customizing it. Still, it only took a bit to clean and then I got to move on to my new pride and joy.

 

That pride and joy was the Independence, officially the Istiglal Ist 14.5 Anti-Materiel Rifle. If the name didn’t give it away, this massive motherfucker fired 14.5x114mm rounds, big enough to tear through the heaviest of armour. The best part? There were five of the fucking things in a magazine. Now, there was a reason those five rounds per magazine was important and that was the fact that this pure beauty of a machine happened to be  _ semi-automatic _ , meaning that you could fire off five rounds of high power death over a mile as fast as the recoil would settle, if that ain't power then I don't know what is. Now don’t get me wrong, she was unwieldy and heavy as all fuck. That’s the kind of stuff that happens when you use a rifle taller than I am, the thing measures to 7.4 feet, to put that into perspective.

 

The only sad thought I had as I cleaned all its parts one by one was that I wasn’t going to get to fire it any time soon. This thing was meant to take out Lung, hopefully by annihilating his upper body before he started powering up, but I was confident a headshot with it could still murder the rage-dragon. But, I had to deal with the Empire before I could take out Lung, much as I wanted to, which meant I wouldn’t get to use the lovely rifle unless… I dunno, Hookwolf started fucking with me or something.

 

I wasn’t on the Empire radar yet, so the chances of that happening were pretty damn low.

 

The reason for that mostly being that the places I attacked usually didn’t get a chance to report back to the main body of the Empire, it’s rather hard to check in when you’re dead. Attacking Empire safehouses was actually how I had afforded this beauty, see, buying guns like this isn’t very easy and considering this thing is from a little place north of Iran by the name of Azerbaijan, well, the price of acquiring one was rather high. It was so high in fact that I’d assembled the thing by parts.

 

You see, the black market of weapons dealers is an interesting place. Most of the people that work it are just selling stock they buy, sorta like a normal store but with much more illegal good. The smaller percentage, however, are the people who sell the good stuff. What I mean by that is that, in a world such as ours with parahumans and corruption everywhere, well who can blame a guy for selling off some excess stock nobody would notice for a little bit of extra cash. Not like his superior is gonna notice a few firing pins are missing or anything, right?

 

So it was that through a multitude of corrupt guards and stock workers in the military of a few middle-eastern countries lead to me attaining a full set of parts for my very own Independence. It was well worth the wait, let me tell you. Also well worth the price, especially considering all of the money came from the Empire.

 

Imagine that, the Empire buying guns from Arabs for me with which to wipe out their gang with. I don’t quite think that’s irony, but it’s close.

 

********

 

What followed my loving care of my guns was more loving care of my personal gear, washing my ACUs, making sure my boots were taken care of, checking that my chest rigging and plate carrier weren’t about to fall apart, that sort of stuff. I also had to make sure my plates were still intact, thankfully they were. I didn’t recall getting shot any time recently, but you never know what adrenaline can make you forget.

 

My helmet was likewise intact, and my goggles didn’t even have any new scratches in them. As I looked over my gear, I thought to myself that maybe getting some form of chemical protection would be a good idea.

 

I mean, I had my gas mask carried in one of the pouches at my hip as per usual, but if I recall reading right the Empire had some cape who could turn into a gas and murderize you like that.

 

It was at that point I realized I didn’t really know as much about my enemies as I really should. After a solid twenty minutes of drill-sergeanting myself I resolved to head home and do as much research as I could, especially considering that I was going to have to start hitting larger targets as the smaller ones ran out.

 

Stowing all my ‘work’ clothing, I changed back into my civvie stuff, locked up my armoury as secure as I could make it, and with the cash I had to spend that was ‘very’, and then started making my way back home, my sidearm tucked under my jacket, invisible to the world until I needed it.

 

I got home right around eight thirty, most of my evening taken doing the inventory of my gear. As I walked up the sidewalk I noticed my Dad’s truck sitting in the drive, and gave a sigh as I made my way to the door.

 

It wasn’t locked, Dad never locked it when at least one of us was there even though I’d told him our neighborhood wasn’t  _ that _ safe. I pushed open the door and beheld the sight of… my Dad standing in the kitchen, looking  at the groceries we suddenly had.

 

“I went out for stuff after school, we didn’t have much at all left to eat.” I said, brushing past him to get at the chicken I’d left thawing in the sink.

 

“Taylor, how did you afford all this? We don-”

 

“I got a job, Dad. Labor laws say 14 an up, it pays pretty well.” I interrupted, hoping it’d stop him from pushing as to where I got the money from.

 

As per usual, he sagged a bit and just hmmd an affirmative before heading back to the couch to stare at the TV. Somewhere, deep inside, it hurt to see him like this.

 

After making sure it was thawed, I started cooking up the chicken and putting on some rice. It was going to be stir fry tonight, a good mix of meat and vegetables to help keep my diet healthy. Dad ate it too, but I doubt it’d do him much good, he drank too much and did too little to be healthy.

 

He finished his meal and went off to his room, presumably to fall asleep. I glanced over at the couch and saw the results of his drinking and amended that ‘pass out’ was perhaps more appropriate.

 

I cleaned up the kitchen, did the dishes, moved into the kitchen to sweep away the evidence of his alcoholism, just like I did every night. Then, finally, I headed up to bed. Already I had plans for how to spend my day.


	5. Cordite - 1.5

_ ‘You little scumbag! I've got your name! I've got your ass! You will not laugh! You will not cry! You will learn by the numbers. I will teach you. Now get up! Get on your feet! You had best unfuck yourself or I will unscrew your head and shit down your neck!’ _

 

It occurred to me after the hours I’d spent researching the capes of my beloved hometown that I needed heavier armaments. Now, of course, I had such as the Independance, but that was an unwieldy thing more suited for sniping a target from a mile away than the urban work I preferred to do.

 

I found the solution to my problems while looking over the inventory I did on my armoury the day before. I happened to have a rather large amount of C-4, mostly in the form of demolitions charges, just sitting around seeing as there wasn’t much need for safe demolitions in a city like this. 

 

Now, lots of people think C-4 is a ready made impact explosive, when really this is about as far from the truth as you can get. C-4 is very stable, it won’t go off from impact, being set on fire, getting shot, or being hit with microwaves, excluding parahuman powers pretty much nothing short of an actual detonator will set it off.

 

Obviously, not very useful if I want something I can just chuck at people who would usually shrug off bullets without giving a fuck. The solution to this problem, you may ask? Pipe bombs. Specifically, lots of pipe bombs taped together.

 

Pipe bombs have been around for a really long fucking time, reason being they’re pretty simple to make. Usually you take some steel pipe, put a chemical mixture in there, and seal the ends with a fuze leading out. Light the fuze, chemicals detonate, big boom and some shrapnel to boot.

 

What I was doing was probably overkill, but these were more meant to be high explosives than hand grenades. What I meant by this was that, not only was I filling them with C4 rather than chemical reactants, I was also going to be taping three pipes together to make one massive charge.

 

I felt confident in my ability to not get blown the fuck up because one of the main dangers with pipe bombs was something setting off the explosive in the process of making them, with C4 this was rather a non issue.

 

Using C4 also had the added benefit of cutting down on material used and weight in general, because I needed much less of the stuff to equate a normal pipe bomb detonation. Of course I still used more than was needed because these were for blasting capes like Hookwolf or Kaiser, who needed more force to do anything to.

 

After actually crafting the explosives, I ended up with about six total charges, came wiring them to blow. Part of this was done in creating the bombs themselves, that being inserting a primary detonator into each individual charge. These detonators were lead out of the shell of the bomb and connected into one single whole.

 

Once I had everything wire together meant it was time to make it so I could actually set them off. This was done with a cheap ass cellphone and an electronic switch kit. Devices similar to this had been used by rebels and terrorist cells all over the world for years, the basic idea being you assigned an electronic switch to the charge, and a signal sent from the cellphone which it was paired to would make it go off. This was also the reason I connected each individual charge together, less points of failure.

 

I didn’t do any tests then and there, I didn’t want any explosions going off around my stuff, but I’d done this kind of build enough times before that I was confident that it’d work. After that I solved the simple problem of not being able to carry them by attaching some velcro and slapping them on my plate carrier. The weight was noticeable, but worth it if I ended up against someone tougher than a normal human.

 

By the time I was finished with my cape research project and the crafting of my very own IEDs most of the day had passed. By which I meant it was already 11:30 at night. Not like Dad would notice I hadn’t come home, so I might as well get on with my night. With care taken to position all my gear so I could easily rip off and detonate my new explosives, I put on my uniform and set out into the night.

 

I needed information, and a lieutenant would be able to point me towards whoever he worked under.

 

********

 

My late friend the Nazi didn’t actually know as much as I’d wanted, but he knew enough to get me started in hunting the upper hierarchy of the Empire’s unpowered members. That was the first step in my plan to dismantle the organization as a whole, find the unpowered leaders and then wipe them out. The powered members would follow once their unpowered support was rendered a non object.

 

Of course, this required heading deep into Empire territory, which was rather par for the course of my nighttime outings. The only difference being the increase of foot patrols I’d been noticing as I creeped through the back alleys. I guess someone had finally gone to investigate why some of their safe houses had gone dark.

 

Still, they couldn’t have found out the true breadth of how many I’d taken down, because while the security was upped, it wasn’t exactly tight. I was seeing the mistakes of people thinking they just got stuck with shit duty. But hey, I wasn’t complaining, it makes my job a lot easier.

 

Pulling up a map on one of the phones I’d ‘liberated’ told me I was getting real close to my objective. Which was great considering it’d take practically all night to get this far in the first place. So far it’d been a good night, I hadn’t even had to fire my sidearm once.

 

Finally the house I wanted came into view. It was rather unimpressive, a single storey place that was deeper than it was wide. Probably had a nice basement if nothing else. What the place also had was armed guards.

 

It was to be expected, this was one of the Empire’s lieutenants and they obviously knew somebody was hunting their men. Only made sense to guard the important people. Against any other cape they might’ve been a good help, at least in giving the guy notice to try and get out of dodge.

 

Of course, I wasn’t any other cape. I knew how not to be a flaming retard and actually use stealth. This was the main thought on my mind as my knife penetrated the front sentry’s back, stabbing right into his poor defenseless kidney. Needless to say he went down pretty damn fast.

 

I quietly laid him down on the porch, out of obvious view, and nabbed the keychain off his belt. Most of the sentries were focused outside, and from what I’d been able to see and here nobody was in the front room. It was certainly much less guarded than the back door.

 

Taking my ear from the door I turned the key and pulled it open just enough to slip inside. Just as I’d thought, nobody was in the lobby, which left me the time to quietly close the door and continue on my merry way.

 

The front room seemed to serve as a kind of dining room, and it lead into the kitchen. Most of the lights in the house were off, owing to the late time of night, and that room was no exception. Moving on gave me a few options, I could take a right to what looked like a garage entrance, or I could keep straight and head to the main hallway that went down the length of the house.

 

Seeing as there wasn’t anything for me in the garage, my choice was rather clear. I heard muted footsteps coming down the hall, and a quick duck into the living room gave me the perfect opportunity to take out the patrolling guard. A quick elbow to the stomach as I rounded the corner followed by a knife through the throat ended any resistance he might’ve put up.

 

Thank god for the ineptitude of Nazis, am I right? Guys didn’t even do radio checks… hell, they didn’t even have radios.

 

At the end of the hall was a single door, if I was guessing right that’d be the master bedroom. It was also the only room that had a light on, so I was feeling pretty confident. Quietly making my way down the hall I repeated my old mirror trick to check the room. The limited field of vision this gave me confirmed that, yes, this was where the lieutenant was currently at and, yes, he was alone. The stupid bastard.

 

I didn’t see a need to break stealth, so when he turned around I carefully eased the door open, slipping inside the room without a sound.

 

As I neared he must’ve felt my footsteps to the floor, because he whirled around like a man possessed. Not that it did him any good as I grabbed his arms and took him to the floor. I little bit of struggling later and I had his neck firmly between my chest and my arm. It didn’t take long for him to lose consciousness.

 

Now, obviously I wasn’t going to carry an unconscious man the distance I’d need to to get out of Empire territory. And obviously I couldn’t just beat the shit out of him in his bedroom until he told me what I wanted to hear, the walls were too thin and sentries were outside.

 

Good news is, like I said, the house had a rather nice basement. A rather nice basement with thick walls far enough down that nobody topside would be able to hear a damn thing from below.

 

With my expertise, he was tied to a chair in his own basement ready for some aggressive questioning in no time.

 

********

 

On the fifth slap I saw his eyes flutter open, darting around his field of vision looking for what was going on.

 

“Well my friend, welcome back to the waking world.” I greeted him warmly, smiling behind my shemagh as he tried and failed to shout out behind the tape closing his mouth shut.

 

“Ah ah ah, don’t you go screaming now. In fact, that’s something we should talk about. You see, I’ve got some questions,” I casually unsheathed my knife, wiping it down with a cloth,” and I’d love if you could answer them. Of course, for that I’d need you to be able to talk, which you can’t very well do gagged. But first I want you to realize what exactly will happen if you try to fuck with me.” Swiftly the knife was introduced to the armrest inches from his hand. You bet that got him freaked out.

 

“So, to clarify, we’re in your basement. Yes, that well insulated deep underground basement far from where any of your little Nazi buddies will find you. I hope that tells you what exactly will happen if you try to call for help. Need a hint? Nothing. Nothing will happen, nobody will come for you. All you’ll do is make me angrier, and if you don’t like me right now you’d hate me when I’m angry.”

 

I pulled my knife out of the chair, wiping it off again and staring him down. “So, do you understand what kind of position you’re in?” He gave a fervent nod, eyes jerking around everywhere. “Well that’s fantastic, so you’ll answer some questions of mine won’t you?” Once again he nodded, even more enthusiastically. Man the Empire do not teach interrogation resistance do they?

 

“Then let’s begin, shall we?” With a smooth motion I sheathed my knife and ripped off the tape covering his mouth, leaving him sitting there in pain for a few moments before I heard him croak out a few words.

 

“A-after I tell you what you want… you’ll… you’ll let me go right?” He had such a look of hope in his eyes, such a desire to see another day. Why I just didn’t have it in my to crush that dream.

 

“But of course, all I want from you is information. Your life is secondary.” At my words he seemed to relax, so I decided it was time to push on. “Now, why don’t you tell me all about who you work for, hm?” And just like that the Nazi bastard started to spill his guts. It sickens me a little to see such poor constitution, but I suppose wannabees are never as good as the real thing.

 

********

 

Seems to be a running trend with unpowered Empire guys not knowing all too much about their superiors. Thankfully this guy was a bit more helpful than the last, giving me the time and location of a dogfighting ring his boss liked to frequent. The look on his face when I told him that’s all I’d be needing was hilarious.

 

It got even funnier when he saw me pull out my handgun and ask what I was doing, wasn’t I going to let him go. Of course, that look of shock quickly changed to one of terror as I carefully explained that he knew far too much to be left alive. After all, surprise is everything in this business.

 

And what a surprise it was when he took a 9mm in the middle of trying to bargain for his life. What can I say, I didn’t want to sit through any more begging. It just gets annoying after awhile, ya know?

 

A quick casing of the house netted me some dosh and a brand new phone with plenty of Empire related messages to go through. And like that I was walking out the door and heading home. I even had time for a morning smoke, just in time to catch the sunrise.

 

Yeah, Brockton Bay might not be the best place, but the sunrises were still beautiful.


End file.
